Page 86 of Dirty Fighter

“Axel came up with them, but Grady’s the one who made it work.” And because it needs saying, “She’s seen the abs.”

She liked them. I know from the hours we spent in bed talking, part of which included her finger stepping up them and then punctuating her points with light kisses, licks, and the occasional teasing bite over them.

“You already gone soft with the season over?” Ben frowns, leaning forward. “Lift your shirt. Lemme see.”

I don’t have it in me to tell him to fuck off.

I don’t even want to.

Dropping into the chair across from him, I fold forward, rubbing my face. “I didn’t think I could handle it. Seeing her come in with him. Waiting for her to muster the courage to tell me she was going back to him… That she loved him?”

That she’d never love me.

“Static, man.” He sighs. “Jason, I know you were into her in high school. That she’s maybe always held a place in your heart. But it’s only been a week, and this?” He waves a hand through the air in my direction. “Shit, this feels like more than some carry-over crush from back in the day. Just exactly how long have you been in love with this girl?”

I look up, and he must see it in my eyes. That understanding most people don’t realize this guy is capable of is there in the hard punch of his breath and the way he pulls Zamboni higher on his chest and cradles the little guy’s head against him.

He knows. He’s been there. But I tell him anyway.

“From the night I met her.”

Rowan

“Mold?” my mother demands, the single word dripping with enough accusation and disbelief that anyone else would have crumbled.

Anyone who hadn’t spent a lifetime on the receiving end of this kind of implied threat and intimidation. Anyone with something left for this woman to take.

But there’s nothing left she can take from me.

Only from Jason. And all I can do is try to delay her taking the cabin long enough that maybe⁠—

“Nothing to say? Suppose I should be used to it after the last weeks.”

“I told you, my phone and computer were fried in the storm. I couldn’t call.”

Her response is a snort. Almost like she knows I’m lying. But that’s the thing, she would never believe me capable of lying to her. Ever. She just wants to watch me scramble.

“I’m not happy about it either, Mom. I had an interested buyer, and now I don’t know.” I brush past her into the house that was the first and last true home I’ve ever known, barely recognizing it as the same space I once shared with Ed. With Jason.

God, it hurts.

The walls have been painted. There are purchases piling up that she hasn’t opened. Clothing bags layered over the backs of chairs. Boxes everywhere. The fixtures she modernized every few years since marrying Ed have now been “upgraded” with such gauche displays of wealth, I want to cringe. The furniture that was as big and comfy as the man they’d been purchased by to accommodate has been replaced by “pieces” as brittle and ostentatious as the woman who bought them. She was a chameleon, so good at faking nearly anything, including a modicum of taste… for a time.

But this?

Clearly, she isn’t interested in faking anything anymore.

Me? It feels like I’m faking every breath I take. Every beat of my heart.

Playing pretend at life when I’ve been dead inside since the moment I realized Jason was gone.

And now this.

I take a breath and summon the girl who was desperate for this woman’s approval. For her love. “Mom, I know it’s a lot. But I really need you right now. I can’t stay at the cabin until it’s been treated, and with all the damage from the storm, it’s at least a month out.”

Her foot taps impatiently. But I know her. I see her. And this woman is salivating over the fact that the daughter who dared to try and break out of her dysfunctional hold is crawling back.

“Not a single list saved to the cloud before this… act of God?”